Large swathes of the South Island remain free of fixed speed cameras as road toll rises

Saturday, 4 July 2026

The South Island has just seven fixed speed cameras, despite a national road toll that remains stubbornly high and a long-planned national rollout that will still leave large parts of the island with little or no permanent camera enforcement.

For the year to July 1, 173 people died on New Zealand roads. That is higher than the equivalent figure for each of the past three years, raising concern that the country may be reversing a recent downward trend in road deaths.

Transport experts have warned road safety progress has slowed, with some pointing to policy changes such as the automatic reversal of speed-limit reductions introduced under the previous Government.

The worsening toll has renewed attention on other parts of the road safety system that remain weak by international standards, including the small scale of New Zealand’s speed camera network and the low penalties for speeding offences.

Despite its long road network, the South Island has effectively no fixed speed cameras north of Leeston, near Christchurch, and just four outside urban Dunedin. There are none on the West Coast.

That means most South Island drivers can travel long distances without passing a permanent speed camera. Enforcement instead relies heavily on police patrols and mobile safety cameras, which are more sporadic and less visible as a standing deterrent.

Authorities are rolling out 17 new variable speed cameras nationally. These measure a vehicle’s average speed between two points, rather than at a single roadside location, and are commonly used overseas. Three of the new cameras are in the South Island, bringing its total number of fixed or point-to-point camera sites to 10.

Speed cameras remain a politically sensitive topic: one of the new variable speed cameras outside Dunedin was vandalised before it was even switched on.

The Government is now pressing ahead with a national speed camera programme, but on a much smaller scale than previously proposed.

Under the former Road to Zero-era programme, the New Zealand Transport Agency’s board endorsed a $365 million business case for a national network of 824 safety cameras, including fixed, point-to-point and other camera types by 2031. According to documents released by the agency, that plan was modelled to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 2221 by 2040.

After the change of government, NZTA concluded the larger option was no longer affordable under the new transport funding settings. It instead recommended a $249m programme, with 204 safety cameras operating by June 2027, while leaving any further expansion to future funding decisions.

The modelling suggested the smaller programme would reduce deaths and serious injuries by 794 by 2040 — about one-third of the safety benefit expected under the larger network.

Long-standing attempts to update New Zealand’s road penalties regime have also been slow. The previous government signalled in 2022 it wanted to update the penalties for various road offences, which have remained largely unchanged since 1999.

A document released around that time noted that road safety penalties “may be too low to deter undesirable behaviour” and “do not align with the level of risk of the offending and, in some cases, are not effective in changing driver behaviour”.

Today, a driver caught travelling at 59km/h in a 50km/h zone is fined $30, the same penalty set more than 25 years ago. If the driver is detected by a fixed camera, they receive no demerit points.

The equivalent penalty is several times higher in many comparable jurisdictions. In parts of Australia and Europe, a similar low-level speeding offence can attract fines of between about $300 and $600.

No review of these fines was ever released.